Diamanda Galas in Kitchener
Matthew King
which is to say, the place where I sit in front of the computer while I'm
not on the Greyhound to or from Toronto.
http://openears.ca/2005/galas.htm
I, therefore, given my increasingly-near-total aversion to live shows,
need to be convinced that I must not miss this.
I'm looking at you, Brenner.
Matthew
--
sometime we may go back there
to the country of our defeat
but it's been a long time since
and we must enquire the way of strangers
Siobhan
(Greylock) wrote:
>Last episode mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) said:
>>So, perplexingly enough, Diamanda Galas is coming to my current hometown,
>>which is to say, the place where I sit in front of the computer while I'm
>>not on the Greyhound to or from Toronto.
>
>Where's Kitchener?
About 100 miles west of Toronto.
Siobhan
...Normal is what cuts off your sixth finger and your tail...
http://www.virulent.org sio...@virulent.org
"It has always p*ssed me off somewhat when people said they
were into DIY until they realised that they had to do
everything themselves." - Amon Zero
Matthew King
: >which is to say, the place where I sit in front of the computer while I'm
: >not on the Greyhound to or from Toronto.
: Where's Kitchener?
Yes, exactly.
Th'Elf, if you recall him, and even if you don't, also lives here, for
some reason.
Jennie Kermode
> Th'Elf, if you recall him, and even if you don't, also lives here, for
> some reason.
How's he doing these days?
Jennie
--
Jennie Kermode jen...@innocent.com
http://www.triffid.demon.co.uk/jennie
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> So, perplexingly enough, Diamanda Galas is coming to my current hometown,
> which is to say, the place where I sit in front of the computer while I'm
> not on the Greyhound to or from Toronto.
>
> http://openears.ca/2005/galas.htm
>
> I, therefore, given my increasingly-near-total aversion to live shows,
> need to be convinced that I must not miss this.
I've gone through phases like that.
http://obsidianrook/doomfiles/PERFORMANCE.html
Largely I think it's the result of a lot there being a lot of
really ill-conceived live performances out there (seen many
lap-top players at work lately? They make the old knob-twisting
electronic artists look fascinating).
> I'm looking at you, Brenner.
You want me to say more than this?
http://obsidianrook/doomfiles/GALAS.html
Well, how about:
If you go hear Diamanda Galas sing live the tone of her voice
will haunt you for the rest of your days.
And she looks good in a leather cat suit, too.
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Greylock (Greylock_NOTT...@vurt.net) wrote:
> : Last episode mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) said:
> : >So, perplexingly enough, Diamanda Galas is coming to my current hometown,
> : >which is to say, the place where I sit in front of the computer while I'm
> : >not on the Greyhound to or from Toronto.
> :
> : Where's Kitchener?
>
> Yes, exactly.
But the oldest comic book store in the world is located in Kitchener!
http://www.sentex.net/~dvanhorn/
And Dave Sim is from there, too.
And what about "Way Cool Tattoos"?
Not to mention the Blackberry.
Matthew King
: On 2005-04-11, Matthew King <mak...@yorku.ca> wrote:
: > Th'Elf, if you recall him, and even if you don't, also lives here, for
: > some reason.
:
: How's he doing these days?
Beats me. I sit in front of the computer and ride the Greyhound to and
from Toronto. Periodically I go grocery shopping. Sometimes I look out the
window.
There was some kind of birthday bash for him at the local freak club,
where I think he DJs, a few weeks ago, so he is at least alive, and aging,
and held to be worth celebrating.
Matthew King
:
: > Greylock (Greylock_NOTT...@vurt.net) wrote:
: > : Where's Kitchener?
: > Yes, exactly.
:
: But the oldest comic book store in the world is located in Kitchener!
: http://www.sentex.net/~dvanhorn/
Heh. I went in there once in search of Sturgeon, since it says it sells
books, and specifies "science fiction", but actually it lies, and only
sells comics. I felt like I'd wandered into a lingerie store.
: And Dave Sim is from there, too.
Never heard of him. (After googling, I see the above will explain that.)
: And what about "Way Cool Tattoos"?
I knew they were here, but didn't know they were *from* here.
: Not to mention the Blackberry.
Urk. Yeah. Huh. For some reason it never occurred to me that RiM may have
put Kitchener on the hipster-geek map. Actually, I know the reason: I am
woefully out of touch. I've never even held an iPod! My computer doesn't
even have a USB port!
But it does have a floppy drive. Is that retro yet, or still just lame?
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> :
> : mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> : > Greylock (Greylock_NOTT...@vurt.net) wrote:
> : > : Where's Kitchener?
> : > Yes, exactly.
> :
> : But the oldest comic book store in the world is located in Kitchener!
> : http://www.sentex.net/~dvanhorn/
>
> Heh. I went in there once in search of Sturgeon, since it says it sells
> books, and specifies "science fiction", but actually it lies, and only
> sells comics. I felt like I'd wandered into a lingerie store.
You have something against lingerie?
> : And Dave Sim is from there, too.
>
> Never heard of him. (After googling, I see the above will explain that.)
Yup. It is however the only reason I'd ever heard of Kitchener
(I cheated and googled up the rest).
> : And what about "Way Cool Tattoos"?
>
> I knew they were here, but didn't know they were *from* here.
>
> : Not to mention the Blackberry.
>
> Urk. Yeah. Huh. For some reason it never occurred to me that RiM may have
> put Kitchener on the hipster-geek map. Actually, I know the reason: I am
> woefully out of touch. I've never even held an iPod!
Well, I can't say that I have either... but then, along time back
I was presuaded that I am not one of "the rest of us".
I did own an early Palm Pilot once... it mostly sat in my desk
drawer until it was stolen by a junkie. (This gave me an excuse
to throw the guy out and insist that he not be allowed to hang
around the place any more, so the loss was well worth it.)
> My computer doesn't even have a USB port!
Well, that's admittedly pretty weird. My 10-15 year-old boxes have
USB ports on them.
> But it does have a floppy drive. Is that retro yet, or still just lame?
Well hey, I just got my first CD-burner. An HP model with an
actual SCSI interface on it that I bought for only $20 from one
of my favorite hardware vendors, "This Weird Guy in the Mission".
I may even play around with it sometime in the next couple of
years.
Jennie Kermode
> mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
>> Heh. I went in there once in search of Sturgeon, since it says it sells
>> books, and specifies "science fiction", but actually it lies, and only
>> sells comics. I felt like I'd wandered into a lingerie store.
> You have something against lingerie?
There's a difference between lingerie and lingerie _stores_.
The latter can be terrifying, especially where they exist as subsets of
large department stores. The last time I had to venture into one, I took
Stuart with me as a guide (he has more friends who are girls, and hence
more experience of such things) and still I was convinced we'd never
find our way out again. I felt like a priest.
>> But it does have a floppy drive. Is that retro yet, or still just lame?
Donald says floppy drives are pointless and outmoded, so he
won't bother to fix them or even to tell me when they break. This is
somewhat problematic, since people still hand me work to be edited on
floppy disks and the genius that is new technology doesn't know what to
do with them.
Tiny Human Ferret
> On 2005-04-17, Joseph Brenner <do...@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>>mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
<snips>
>>>But it does have a floppy drive. Is that retro yet, or still just lame?
>
>
> Donald says floppy drives are pointless and outmoded, so he
> won't bother to fix them or even to tell me when they break. This is
> somewhat problematic, since people still hand me work to be edited on
> floppy disks and the genius that is new technology doesn't know what to
> do with them.
A floppy drive is about U$10.00 or so, probably you can get one in the
UK for under 5 pounds if I'm doing conversions well enough.
They are just fine for the purposes you mention. They're also essential
for things like installing various OS such as NetBSD on older machines, etc.
--
The incapacity of a weak and distracted government may
often assume the appearance, and produce the effects,
of a treasonable correspondence with the public enemy.
--Gibbon, "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"
==================================================================
"Sometimes, Evil drives a mini-van."
--Desperate Housewives
Jennie Kermode
> A floppy drive is about U$10.00 or so, probably you can get one in the
> UK for under 5 pounds if I'm doing conversions well enough.
Oh, I know that. It's fighting for a free space in the
computer tower for it that's tricky, and making sure it doesn't get
forgotten about each time linux is reinstalled.
Roseb...@aol.com
grant to open a comic book store and I was surprised (I really
shouldn't be surprised though because I know its still a popular
industry) to see how many actual comic book stores there are. A lot of
them are online and some of them even specialize in selling comics on
Ebay but having an actual brick and mortar comic book store there are
still some of those around. Someone mentioned about the more or less
mainstream comic books being sold in mainstream places like the
supermarket and department stores but the diehard fans that are
interested in those "hard to find" comics have a harder time of it
trying to find what they want.
-----------
Rose-Grant Basics 101
http://members.aol.com/Roseb441702/grants.htm
Matthew King
: > : But the oldest comic book store in the world is located in Kitchener!
: > : http://www.sentex.net/~dvanhorn/
: > books, and specifies "science fiction", but actually it lies, and only
: > sells comics. I felt like I'd wandered into a lingerie store.
:
: You have something against lingerie?
No, I'm just insecure in my sexuality.
Actually, now that I think about it, yes, yes I do have something against
lingerie.
The purpose of lingerie is to make women look like prostitutes so that
they don't remind men of their mothers. (I was professionally obliged to
read some Freud this year, and damned if it doesn't seep into your brain.)
Yeah, anyway, I'd forgotten about your Diamanda Galas doomfile (or maybe
I'd never read it, who knows); that is in fact about enough to convince me
that I should go, though it's a long way from should to will.
whisky-dave
"Matthew King" <mak...@yorku.ca> wrote in message
news:d4hqkm$gho$1...@sunburst.ccs.yorku.ca...
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> No, I'm just insecure in my sexuality.
>
> Actually, now that I think about it, yes, yes I do have something against
> lingerie.
Yes, and it's making it sticky and it leaves a stain, please stand further
away
from the manikiuns.
Joseph Brenner
Roseb...@aol.com writes:
> Someone did a search looking for information about getting a government
> grant to open a comic book store and I was surprised (I really
> shouldn't be surprised though because I know its still a popular
> industry) to see how many actual comic book stores there are.
Well, some of us would be surprised at the thought that you could
get a government grant to get into the business, but I guess "The
Cartoon Art Museum" in SF might be thought of as something like that.
> A lot of them are online and some of them even specialize in
> selling comics on Ebay but having an actual brick and mortar
> comic book store there are still some of those around. Someone
> mentioned about the more or less mainstream comic books being
> sold in mainstream places like the supermarket and department
> stores
Really, those kind of places are terrible for buying even
"mainstream" comics. You'll get some (though probably not all)
of the really "big" ones (X-men, Batman, Spiderman...), but
there's a lot of stuff put out by the big two publishers that
you need to go to an "independant" store to find.
> but the diehard fans that are interested in those "hard
> to find" comics have a harder time of it trying to find what
> they want.
Well, yeah. The independant comic shop was a trend from the 80s
(along with a revival in independantly produced comic books -- in
large part fueled by the sucess of Cerbeus produced by Dave Sim
of the world famous city of Kitchener).
I would imagine they're still hanging on not so much because
they're profitable, but because once you're in that business it's
probably hard to think about a direction to go from there.
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> : > Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : > : But the oldest comic book store in the world is located in Kitchener!
> : > : http://www.sentex.net/~dvanhorn/
> : > Heh. I went in there once in search of Sturgeon, since it says it sells
> : > books, and specifies "science fiction", but actually it lies, and only
> : > sells comics. I felt like I'd wandered into a lingerie store.
> :
> : You have something against lingerie?
>
> No, I'm just insecure in my sexuality.
>
> Actually, now that I think about it, yes, yes I do have something against
> lingerie.
>
> The purpose of lingerie is to make women look like prostitutes so that
> they don't remind men of their mothers.
And this interferes with your incest fantasies?
Kara
<do...@kzsu.stanford.edu> wrote:
>
>Roseb...@aol.com writes:
>> A lot of them are online and some of them even specialize in
>> selling comics on Ebay but having an actual brick and mortar
>> comic book store there are still some of those around. Someone
>> mentioned about the more or less mainstream comic books being
>> sold in mainstream places like the supermarket and department
>> stores
>
>Really, those kind of places are terrible for buying even
>"mainstream" comics. You'll get some (though probably not all)
>of the really "big" ones (X-men, Batman, Spiderman...), but
>there's a lot of stuff put out by the big two publishers that
>you need to go to an "independant" store to find.
Norway is one of the biggest comic-reading nations in the world. Most
supermarkets and newsstands have a good selection of comics, though
most of them are aimed at kids (so people here would probably not call
it a good selection, most are also transelated into Norwegian). We do
however have quite a few shops that specialize in comics (no exclusive
comicbook shops, as far as I can remember, but more books and comics,
rpg's and comics etc.) and you can get most anything you want (I
think, I don't get that much into it).
But the best is that we have quite a few used comicbook shops. I
really miss them over here in Dublin. Whenever I'm going traveling,
I'd go buy 6-8 comics, for the price of one new. You wouldn't allways
get what you wanted, but at that price you can aford to buy stuff
you've never heard of.
Kara
lunacia
>Norway is one of the biggest comic-reading nations in the world. Most
>supermarkets and newsstands have a good selection of comics, though
>most of them are aimed at kids (so people here would probably not call
>it a good selection, most are also transelated into Norwegian).
Well, we have Larsons Gale Verden, Nemi, Ernie, Pondus, and quite a
few others that are adult comics sold in regular shops... It's a lot
better here than in most other countries I've been to. I thought the
UK sucked when it came to comics...
lunacia
--
[alt.gothic.bookworms] - homepage:
http://home.no.net/lunacia/agb/
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> The purpose of lingerie is to make women look like prostitutes so that
> they don't remind men of their mothers. (I was professionally obliged to
> read some Freud this year, and damned if it doesn't seep into your brain.)
Just stumbled across Cosma Shalizi's comments about Freud:
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/freud.html
Written in 1997. What was it exactly about the mid-1990s, that
all of a sudden the gloves came off and suddenly it was okay to
let Freud have it? As far back as the mid 70s, it was pretty
clear to people like myself with technical pretensions that Freud
wasn't much of a "scientist"... and the feminist critique of
Freud was going hot-and-heavy already at that point... why did it
take so long for people to really dig into him?
Matthew King
: Just stumbled across Cosma Shalizi's comments about Freud:
:
: http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/freud.html
:
: Written in 1997. What was it exactly about the mid-1990s, that
: all of a sudden the gloves came off and suddenly it was okay to
: let Freud have it?
Yep. The watershed among the pop-intelligentsia was a piece by Frederick
Crews in the New York Review of Books in 1993. Here's a piece by him,
looking back on it in 1995:
http://human-nature.com/freud/crews.html
: why did it take so long for people to really dig into him?
One guess: lack of widely credible, distinctly non-psychoanalytic,
therapeutic alternatives. As far as I can see, Prozac drove a stake
through Freud, at least as the god of psychology/iatry in the popular
imagination. (People tell me that Freud is still, actually, really big in
both psychology departments and clinical practice, but I just don't see
it. But to some extent it depends what you take "Freud" to stand for. Some
"Freud" is pretty useful, anyway--have a look here--
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/
--for "reaction formation(s)".)
And there's the fact that Freud was just so essential to the intellectual
atmosphere (not just among intellectuals, either); it's hard to see your
way out of something when you're so used to seeing everything through it.
Funny Shalizi should quote Nabokov; a few weeks ago I was looking at a
later edition of an early Nabokov book, with an introduction by him in
which he says that he has developed a habit in these introductions of
addressing some words to "the Vienna set", denying their inevitable
interpretations. It looks so quaint now, so dated, so strange, that at
that time that sort of thing was just a matter of course. It sticks out at
me in Sturgeon, too.
Matthew
--
someday we may go back there
Matthew King
So, as at least those of you not in possession of weapons of mass
destruction *koff* know or at least ought to have deduced, I did in fact
summon the will to go see Diamanda Galas.
She performed a "new version" of "Defixiones: Orders from the Dead", which
is apparently not to be confused with "Defixiones: Will and Testament",
though this whole business is very confusing to me; I don't know whether
"new version" means that "Orders from the Dead" is a new version of "Will
and Testament" or whether it's a new version of "Orders from the Dead"
which is a new version of "Will and Testament". One way or another, the
names and order of the songs performed was identical to those on Disc A of
the "Will and Testament" album released last year; there were a couple of
additional poems included in the program, but I don't think they were
performed.
Phew. Anyway, "Defixiones" (however you cut it) is, I don't know what
you'd call it, a suite, an oratorio, concerning, Galas says, the
Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek genocides of the early 20th
century. (She interestingly avoids saying explicitly that Turks were the
perpetrators of these genocides, or alleged genocides depending on your
point of view. I wonder how Turks feel about the piece. Galas is, her bio
notes prominently, of Greek descent.)
The performance took place in the dark-wood-panelled, candle-filled
sanctuary of a medium-small neo-Romanesque cross-shaped church; she wore
an outfit of layers of sheer black, draped from head to foot but for her
arms; her face was generally partially obscured, sometimes wearing
glasses, apparently to indicate a different character. She never broke
character until she came out to acknowledge the applause at the end,
moving very deliberately between songs from pulpit to lectern to a piano
in the middle of the sanctuary.
All of this heightened the alienating effect of the fact that almost all
the material is in a variety of Mediterranean and near-Eastern
languages--I'm not sure exactly which, but at least Greek, Turkish,
Spanish, Arabic, presumably Armenian (I thought I heard French, and I
understand there's French on the album, but there's no French in the
program)--which assures that practically no one except Galas herself will
understand everything that's sung, as it's sung, without having studied
the material beforehand. And then there is the musical strangeness of the
whole thing, screeching, wailing, shouting, though sometimes with
conventionally dark romantic piano passages and Death-in-June-style
extended drum tracks.
What struck me most about the whole thing was how, in that way, it is so
typical of (loosely speaking) modern art [1]. Only the artist--if even the
artist--knows exactly what's happening in the piece. The audience has only
the trust--if it has that, and some in this mixed festival audience,
including the grey-haired woman in front of me who shook her head a few
times, clearly did not, though only a few walked out--that something
important is actually being expressed sincerely, in a manner befitting it,
even though the message can't be received. All that can be received,
really, is the sincerity of the performer and the atmosphere of the
performance. (I was reminded, at this performance in this church, of my
visit, as part of a tour group, to an old Orthodox church in Russia just
before the end of the USSR. There was something going on in the church,
somber old dark-clad people muttering together, and of course we had no
idea what. Officially, I guess, nothing was going on, hence our cavalierly
tramping through (which a friend of mine, one of those uneasy agnostics,
wouldn't). But it was something.)
And pure technique[2]: Galas does truly amazing things with her voice, her
amazing variety of voices--the one of the amazing things about them is
that the harsher ones don't kill the conventionally operatic ones. [3]
Of course, the atmosphere of the performance counts for a lot--what is
art, primarily, but the creation of atmosphere, to change the world's
texture, the Umwelt of the Welt? And while this performance certainly did
that better than your average show, it disappointed me by not trying quite
hard enough to complete its atmospheric creation, in ways that it clearly
could have.
First, Galas's use of microphones was an unnecessary anachronistic break
from character; due to the layout of the church, she was never more than
maybe 60 feet from any part of the audience, and she has more than enough
voice to fill every bit of it of the church. The use of mikes just made it
rock-concert-loud, and destroyed the opportunity to draw the audience in
to listen closely.
Second, while the recorded backing tracks she used were presumably a
financial necessity, the performance would be improved--again, the
disruptive rock concert feel would be reduced--if they were performed
live. Most obviously, at least the church's organ could have been used;
having only one performer onstage may well be a desideratum, and the
organist would be offstage. But the church also had a balcony, which was
occupied by sound and light equipment; having a drummer up there, unseen,
performing the recorded drum track would have been very effective.
Third, Galas periodically drank out of large plastic water bottles. She
was as discreet as possible about it, but nonetheless, it was impossible
to ignore. Why not use chalices, or somesuch? It's a small thing, but the
failure to look after these small things just seems like a failure (on her
part, or whose, one couldn't know) to *care* enough.
Finally, Galas did come out at the end to acknowledge the audience's
applause. Even before the performance began, I was wondering if she'd
finally break character at the end to do that. I was disappointed that she
did: the the art('s)work, then, is to be left in the museum, the
atmosphere in the church, the Umwelt not carried out into the Welt.
Look: if you're going to be pretentious, you'd better not let up.
Anyway. I'd like to see the thing again, having studied the texts
(provided in the program in the original and in translation), to see what
difference it makes.
[1] And yet the antithesis of the most modern of art, abstract
expressionism.
[2] Which reminds me of that old Armenian abstract expressionist Rabo
Karabekian, memorializer of the genocide, who, when asked what made his
monochrome house-painted canvasses art, whipped up a realist drawing of
plainly evident technical virtuosity, and said, "the fact that I can do
this."
[3] The day before Galas, I went to a performance in another Kitchener
church by a trio consisting of bass clarinet, cello, and pipe organ.
They're called Sanctuary, and bill themselves as influenced by Gregorian
chant, but most of their stuff comes across as New Age muzack. (The better
of it reminded me of bits of Glass's Koyaanisqatsi.) But I was impressed
by the technical proficiency of the bass clarinetist--the lead player, who
played standing up, holding the instrument like a saxophone--who at one
point was playing parallel two-note chords, which I'd never imagined you
could do on a reed instrument. (You do it, apparently, by harnessing that
infamous clarinet squeek.)
Rachael
<snip>
Thanks for these notes. I'd like to see her perform, but so
far I have not been able to watch her on stage and live.
R. np: SPK - Wars of Islam
--
"Suavia musae... me delectant, me deiciunt, me consolantur."
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : Just stumbled across Cosma Shalizi's comments about Freud:
> :
> : http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/notebooks/freud.html
> :
> : Written in 1997. What was it exactly about the mid-1990s, that
> : all of a sudden the gloves came off and suddenly it was okay to
> : let Freud have it?
>
> Yep. The watershed among the pop-intelligentsia was a piece by Frederick
> Crews in the New York Review of Books in 1993. Here's a piece by him,
> looking back on it in 1995:
> http://human-nature.com/freud/crews.html
Well, human-nature seems to be down, but searches on Freud
Crewes turn up much (many reviews of his collection "Unauthorized Freud").
I guess I remember hearing some of the echoes of this particular
attack (the "recovered memory" flap). It doesn't quite explain
why this particular attack was so successful... [1].
I think you could be on to something with this guess:
> : why did it take so long for people to really dig into him?
>
> One guess: lack of widely credible, distinctly non-psychoanalytic,
> therapeutic alternatives. As far as I can see, Prozac drove a stake
> through Freud, at least as the god of psychology/iatry in the popular
> imagination.
I suppose it has to be *something* like this... there was a
great upsurge in belief in biological explanations of human
behavior, and when you've got one "explanation" in mind, it's
easier to dump another.
> Some "Freud" is pretty useful, anyway--have a look here--
> http://leiterreports.typepad.com/ --for "reaction
> formation(s)".)
He came up with all sorts of colorful jargon, certainly...
I'm a fan of id/ego/superego, myself.
> And there's the fact that Freud was just so essential to the intellectual
> atmosphere (not just among intellectuals, either); it's hard to see your
> way out of something when you're so used to seeing everything through it.
>
> Funny Shalizi should quote Nabokov;
Hey, Shalizi is hip. And the Nabokov complaint is certainly
apropo... it's the kind of thing that I was getting at.
Freudian-style psychoanalysis had totally taken over by the 50s,
it had become this weird secular religion, a wide-spread article
of faith -- but as far as I can tell there have always been
people around complaining about it being nonsense. The tended
to get shrugged off as philistines -- sometimes, e.g with John
Dickson Carr, they really were philistines -- but it's hard to
justify that sort of attitude with someone like Nabokov.
> a few weeks ago I was looking at a later edition of an early
> Nabokov book, with an introduction by him in which he says
> that he has developed a habit in these introductions of
> addressing some words to "the Vienna set", denying their
> inevitable interpretations.
Imagine the kind of reactions he must've gotten to "Lolita".
> It looks so quaint now, so dated, so strange, that at that
> time that sort of thing was just a matter of course. It sticks
> out at me in Sturgeon, too.
Hm... try watching "Rebel Without a Cause" some time.
Really heavy-handed in some ways.
[1] The way I remember the intellectual zeitgeist:
The first thing I noticed about texts in the social sciences
when I was a young teenager was that they were expending a lot
of energy in explaining the basics of science. In the 80s I
noticed that the psych grad students I knew had been taught a
lot more about statistical significance than I had ("chi square
test"). The social sciences seemed well aware that they had a
problem with a lack of a hard foundation and they were doing
their best to firm things up.
And in the 70s feminists were supposed to be the latest thing,
weren't they? Everyone wanted to be a Feminist (until the early
80s or so, when a lot of people started getting irritated with
them...). So how can their sneers at the "penis envy" theory
have fallen on so many deaf ears?
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Phew. Anyway, "Defixiones" (however you cut it) is, I don't know what
> you'd call it, a suite, an oratorio, concerning, Galas says, the
> Armenian, Assyrian, and Anatolian Greek genocides of the early 20th
> century. (She interestingly avoids saying explicitly that Turks were the
> perpetrators of these genocides, or alleged genocides depending on your
> point of view. I wonder how Turks feel about the piece. Galas is, her bio
> notes prominently, of Greek descent.)
That *is* interesting. At a guess, her take is that the point
isn't "You can't trust those damn Turks", but rather "You can't
trust humanity".
The knuckles of one of her hands are tattooed "WE ARE ALL HIV+".
> The performance took place in the dark-wood-panelled, candle-filled
> sanctuary of a medium-small neo-Romanesque cross-shaped church; she wore
> an outfit of layers of sheer black, draped from head to foot but for her
> arms; her face was generally partially obscured, sometimes wearing
> glasses, apparently to indicate a different character. She never broke
> character until she came out to acknowledge the applause at the end,
> moving very deliberately between songs from pulpit to lectern to a piano
> in the middle of the sanctuary.
> All of this heightened the alienating effect of the fact that almost all
> the material is in a variety of Mediterranean and near-Eastern
> languages--I'm not sure exactly which, but at least Greek, Turkish,
> Spanish, Arabic, presumably Armenian (I thought I heard French, and I
> understand there's French on the album, but there's no French in the
> program)--which assures that practically no one except Galas herself will
> understand everything that's sung, as it's sung, without having studied
> the material beforehand.
I suspect that this part wouldn't have bugged me much... when you
don't know the language, you just listen to the voice. I know
people who prefer not knowing the language, who regard the
denoative meaning as just a distraction. (Like I've said before,
I think there are advantages to listening to pop music in a
language you don't know... the lyrics are usually so stupid
you're better off not knowing what it's supposed to be about.)
> And then there is the musical strangeness of the whole thing,
> screeching, wailing, shouting,
Her trademark. One of the many dubious decisions I've made in my
life is to pass up going to see her perform during the "Plauge
Mass" era, because I wasn't sure I could endure an hour of that,
however cool I thought it was one track at a time.
> though sometimes with conventionally dark romantic piano
> passages and Death-in-June-style extended drum tracks.
The one time I saw her perform was during the "Malediction and
Prayer" era, when she was essentially just doing voice and piano
(sometimes with some digital effects on the piano, e.g. one piece
used an echo with pitch shifted down, to get a "it's slowing
down" effect -- never heard anyone else use this). Most of the
lyrics were in English in that performance, she was doing some
remarkable covers of things like the Phil Och's song "the Iron
Maiden" and Johnny Cash's "21 Minutes to Go".
> What struck me most about the whole thing was how, in that way, it is so
> typical of (loosely speaking) modern art [1]. Only the artist--if even the
> artist--knows exactly what's happening in the piece. The audience has only
> the trust--if it has that, and some in this mixed festival audience,
> including the grey-haired woman in front of me who shook her head a few
> times, clearly did not, though only a few walked out--that something
> important is actually being expressed sincerely, in a manner befitting it,
> even though the message can't be received.
Come to think of it, a small group of people a few rows in front
of me walked out early in the "Malediction and Prayer"
performance. Perhaps they were expecting her to strip off her
clothes and douse herself with blood? Maybe they were
traumatized by hippie parents and couldn't abide any whiff of
"folk music".
Anyway, as for "modern" art vs. "traditional" art... Well, I
think I might actually call this performance something like
"abstract impressionism", in that you're told what kind of
conceptual material the artist had in mind (much as say, a
splatter painting might suddenly seem more comprehensible once
you know that it's titled "Anxiety").
I think in general that all art (to the extent that it's
communicative, which I would say is a large extent) depends on
context: some sort of shared frame-of-reference. This doesn't go
away with "modern" art... John Cage might chant randomly
selected nonsense syllables, but the Cage afficianado understands
instantly the sort of method he probably used to select these
syllables, and listens accordingly, while someone who isn't clued
in might just be confused by the entire thing. So yes, (some of)
the grey-haired ladies shake their heads.
Why exactly is it somehow less weird if the song being sung has
lyrics that you can follow easily but don't actually go anywhere?
The lyrics of a typical pop song often seem like very prefunctory
place holders that let the vocalists make the expected mouth
noises. The audiences that listen to this kind of music often
don't pay much attention to the meaning of the words -- they don't
really know what's being sung, they just want to know that they
*could* know, if they felt like making the effort.
> And pure technique[2]: Galas does truly amazing things with her voice, her
> amazing variety of voices--the one of the amazing things about them is
> that the harsher ones don't kill the conventionally operatic ones. [3]
What's also amazing is that her voice still works at all.
She's been abusing it for decades.
> Of course, the atmosphere of the performance counts for a lot--what is
> art, primarily, but the creation of atmosphere, to change the world's
> texture, the Umwelt of the Welt? And while this performance certainly did
> that better than your average show, it disappointed me by not trying quite
> hard enough to complete its atmospheric creation, in ways that it clearly
> could have.
Well, I think your complaints -- which I'm snipping -- sound a
bit on the picky side, and I *suspect* that they're a little
besides the point. Essentially you're saying you wanted slicker
(or maybe "neater"?) theatrics... but is that *really* what you
want?
I think this is probably getting closer to the real trouble:
> Finally, Galas did come out at the end to acknowledge the audience's
> applause. Even before the performance began, I was wondering if she'd
> finally break character at the end to do that. I was disappointed that she
> did: the the art('s)work, then, is to be left in the museum, the
> atmosphere in the church, the Umwelt not carried out into the Welt.
>
> Look: if you're going to be pretentious, you'd better not let up.
I think I had a similar reaction to seeing her perform. It's
hard to fault her on concept, ability or execution (in my
opinion, anyway), but I walked away thinking something like "Was
that sincere?" That strikes me as a totally insane question to
ask, and yet I went a way asking it -- is it a sign that
something was missing? Maybe. I still don't know.
I'd be happy to go see her perform again though. She hasn't
performed in the Bay Area in over a year...
> Anyway. I'd like to see the thing again, having studied the texts
> (provided in the program in the original and in translation), to see what
> difference it makes.
Sure, that could be an interesting experiment... I see that the
english text of some of the material is up on her web site:
http://www.diamandagalas.com/index_hatred.html
Another interesting experiment might be to pick one of the more
bewildering pieces and just listen to a recording of it a dozen
times to see if familiarity changes your perception of it.
> [2] Which reminds me of that old Armenian abstract expressionist Rabo
> Karabekian, memorializer of the genocide, who, when asked what made his
> monochrome house-painted canvasses art, whipped up a realist drawing of
> plainly evident technical virtuosity, and said, "the fact that I can do
> this."
Yes, a common dodge, and few of us are free of this prejudice:
you need to show that you're capable of doing conventional work
before you're allowed to do unconventional.
But it really doesn't hold up. F.M. Einheit is good at what he
does, even if he isn't capable of performing a string quartet.
> [3] The day before Galas, I went to a performance in another Kitchener
> church by a trio consisting of bass clarinet, cello, and pipe organ.
> They're called Sanctuary, and bill themselves as influenced by Gregorian
> chant, but most of their stuff comes across as New Age muzack. (The better
> of it reminded me of bits of Glass's Koyaanisqatsi.) But I was impressed
> by the technical proficiency of the bass clarinetist--
Which is a very cool instrument, if you ask me.
> the lead player, who played standing up, holding the instrument
> like a saxophone--who at one point was playing parallel
> two-note chords, which I'd never imagined you could do on a
> reed instrument. (You do it, apparently, by harnessing that
> infamous clarinet squeek.)
The world of "extended techniques" is many and various.
(Can a flutist be a great flutist if not capable of "circular
breathing"?)
Matthew King
: > the material is in a variety of Mediterranean and near-Eastern
: > languages--I'm not sure exactly which, but at least Greek, Turkish,
: > Spanish, Arabic, presumably Armenian (I thought I heard French, and I
: > understand there's French on the album, but there's no French in the
: > program)--which assures that practically no one except Galas herself will
: > understand everything that's sung, as it's sung, without having studied
: > the material beforehand.
:
: I suspect that this part wouldn't have bugged me much...
It didn't *bug* me--it makes the whole effect, and I did like the effect,
insofar as it was effective, which was fairly far.
: (Like I've said before, I think there are advantages to listening to
: pop music in a language you don't know... the lyrics are usually so
: stupid you're better off not knowing what it's supposed to be about.)
Henry Rollins once said somewhere that he liked being in countries where
he didn't know the language because he wasn't forced to listen to the
idiotic things people were saying on the streetcar. Or something.
: a splatter painting might suddenly seem more comprehensible once
: you know that it's titled "Anxiety".
Tangent: I've invested quite a bit of energy, the last six or seven years,
in Barnett Newman's "The Voice of Fire". The last time I went to see it, a
tour guide was telling his group to stare at the line where the red and
blue meet. After a while, the line starts shimmering and tongues of orange
start shooting into the blue--hey presto, voice of fire! That's what it
*does*, see--well, it's not *of* anything, so it must *do* something--and
once you *get it*, you move on to the next one.
So, you know, "Red and Blue Composition #4" would have been a lot better
... except sometimes it's better to give the wrong idea.
Actually, on that same trip, another tour guide had her bunch of kids lie
on the floor with their feet up against the little barrier, as if that was
what it was for, so you could look up at the painting, properly. She kind
of had me wondering if that really *was* what it was for, until I went
around the other side of it and the security guard asked me to please get
behind it.
(Which reminds me of another trip to an art gallery, in which *I* was part
of a group, except not a sanctioned group, and we were huddling around one
of the paintings, and the guard told us we weren't allowed to stop--this
was the Cezanne/Gauguin/[other French guys?] roadshow that stopped by
Toronto a couple of years ago. Our leader argued with the guy for a while,
until the guy said "Look, I have nothing against art, or education, or..."
and at that point everyone knew he'd given the game away. Poor guy.)
: Why exactly is it somehow less weird if the song being sung has
: lyrics that you can follow easily but don't actually go anywhere?
: The lyrics of a typical pop song often seem like very prefunctory
: place holders that let the vocalists make the expected mouth
: noises.
:
: The audiences that listen to this kind of music often
: don't pay much attention to the meaning of the words -- they don't
: really know what's being sung, they just want to know that they
: *could* know, if they felt like making the effort.
I don't know. I mean, I really don't know, insofar as I don't really know
anyone who listens to mainstream pop, but I get the impression that a lot
of people who do, know all the words. Probably they just have a much(!)
higher cliche tolerance than you, or I, do. Not to mention a much higher
repetition tolerance, which I guess amounts to about the same thing.
The guy who lives below us was listening to the same new country ballad,
over and over again, for two weeks recently. This followed immediately
upon the departure of a screaming baby; we surmise its mother left him,
and this was his breakup song. My (relatively benign psychopath) roommate
in first year university got dumped and listened to that bloody "just
another day without you" song incessantly for a month. (Then there was the
guy who lived down the hall from me who listened to "Ice Cream" by Sarah
McLaughlin on repeat for weeks on end.)
: Well, I think your complaints -- which I'm snipping -- sound a
: bit on the picky side
I'm a grad student. Complaining is my job.
And if you think I'm going to skip the opportunity, you haven't been
paying attention.
: and I *suspect* that they're a little besides the point. Essentially
: you're saying you wanted slicker (or maybe "neater"?) theatrics... but
: is that *really* what you want?
I want a costume party where everyone goes home without taking their masks
off.
: > Look: if you're going to be pretentious, you'd better not let up.
:
: I think I had a similar reaction to seeing her perform. It's
: hard to fault her on concept, ability or execution (in my
: opinion, anyway), but I walked away thinking something like "Was
: that sincere?" That strikes me as a totally insane question to
: ask, and yet I went away asking it
Maybe you meant to be asking something else. What's sincerity in art,
anyway? (Well, she could sincerely care about doing justice to the memory
of the Armenians et al., but whether she does or doesn't is a question
about propaganda, not art.) What I want is *commitment*. ("Passion" is in
the area, but dispassionate commitment would do, too.)
If I were to invent myself as a piece of usenet art, I would be much more
committed, but much less sincere.
Hypocrites are sincere.
: > [2] Which reminds me of that old Armenian abstract expressionist Rabo
: > Karabekian, memorializer of the genocide, who, when asked what made his
: > monochrome house-painted canvasses art, whipped up a realist drawing of
: > plainly evident technical virtuosity, and said, "the fact that I can do
: > this."
:
: Yes, a common dodge, and few of us are free of this prejudice:
: you need to show that you're capable of doing conventional work
: before you're allowed to do unconventional.
I think it's more basic than that--you need to show that you can do
something I (or my three-year-old, or my dog) can't do, or else what's so
special about you?
(And, you know, the same thing applies to philosophers (and poets), which
is part of the bind (public) intellectuals are in these days, caught
between the banal and the arcane.)
kest
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
>:
>: The audiences that listen to this kind of music often
>: don't pay much attention to the meaning of the words -- they don't
>: really know what's being sung, they just want to know that they
>: *could* know, if they felt like making the effort.
>
> I don't know. I mean, I really don't know, insofar as I don't really
> know anyone who listens to mainstream pop, but I get the impression
> that a lot of people who do, know all the words. Probably they just
> have a much(!) higher cliche tolerance than you, or I, do. Not to
> mention a much higher repetition tolerance, which I guess amounts to
> about the same thing.
>
I think its further than tolerance. There are many good things about
knowing all the words. Which doesn't necessarily mean you know or care
what the words are *about*, it just means you can sing along, which makes
you a participant in a shared cultural experience. To that end, pop
songs are full of cliches and repetition: to make them easier to pick up
and sing along with. Its a feature, not a bug.
k
Joseph Brenner
kest <ke...@spamfree.nettrip.org> writes:
> mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) scrawled:
>
>> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
>>:
>>: The audiences that listen to this kind of music often
>>: don't pay much attention to the meaning of the words -- they don't
>>: really know what's being sung, they just want to know that they
>>: *could* know, if they felt like making the effort.
>> I don't know. I mean, I really don't know, insofar as I don't really
>> know anyone who listens to mainstream pop, but I get the impression
>> that a lot of people who do, know all the words. Probably they just
>> have a much(!) higher cliche tolerance than you, or I, do. Not to
>> mention a much higher repetition tolerance, which I guess amounts to
>> about the same thing.
Well, it's true that there are lots of people who seem to
regard stuff that strikes me as inane and obvious as really
great and meaningful... (We've talked before about the
tendency of many people to start spewing soap opera dialog
when confronted with extreme emotion: they think that's what
they're supposed to do, they don't have anything else in
their heads to work with, etc...)
But I came to my conclusion (that "the words don't matter
that much") after observing a number of examples of radio
hits that people listened to for a long time without
understanding the words. My favorite example is Lou Reed's
"Walk on the Wild Side", that a suprising number of folks
didn't seem to get was about transvestites in New York.
It's not like that's a hard one to understand, either.
And also, just from introspection, I know there's a tendency
with me to hear just little scattered phrases of the lyrics
of a song on the first few listens.... and then it's really
easy to click over from that first, superficial listen to the
"familiar background noise" category, without ever really
grasping the entire song.
So you know, it's not like I'm sneering at people who don't
Pay Attention... what I think is weird is the aversion to
songs sung in Other Languages (e.g. it's extremely rare for
a non-English song to make it onto the US charts).
> I think its further than tolerance. There are many good things about
> knowing all the words. Which doesn't necessarily mean you know or care
> what the words are *about*, it just means you can sing along, which makes
> you a participant in a shared cultural experience. To that end, pop
> songs are full of cliches and repetition: to make them easier to pick up
> and sing along with.
Sure, for a lot of people, emersing yourself in group
identity is what music is about. Peter Frampton used to
(Quote) Sing (Unquote) "Do you feel like I do?", which I
think sums up the spirit of arena rock. Let's all do the
same drugs so we can be *sure* we feel the same thing.
But you know, there isn't a lot of singing along going on out
there, at least not that I've noticed...
Or to take one of the very few examples of hit songs with
some Foreign Language in it, the dreaded "Macarena": it
functioned very well as an idol for group worship, without
the spanish language chorus getting in the way. Why aren't
there more of those?
Joseph Brenner
mak...@yorku.ca (Matthew King) writes:
> Joseph Brenner (do...@kzsu.stanford.edu) wrote:
> : (Like I've said before, I think there are advantages to listening to
> : pop music in a language you don't know... the lyrics are usually so
> : stupid you're better off not knowing what it's supposed to be about.)
>
> Henry Rollins once said somewhere that he liked being in countries where
> he didn't know the language because he wasn't forced to listen to the
> idiotic things people were saying on the streetcar. Or something.
Dangerbaby and I were just watching an Indian "Filmee" on video
without any sub-titles. It appeared to be from the early 80s,
based on the big hair and leg-warmers and so on... we spent a lot
of time discussing the interior decorating. A guy with a John
Waters mustache and a tendency to wear silver lame' jackets was
driving what was apparently supposed to be a slick van, with what
looked an awful lot like a shrunken poodle head dangling from the
rear view mirror.
We only occasionally speculated on what the plot was about (I can
generally supply a plausible explanation for what's going on at
any moment, though there's no reason to have any confidence that
I'm right).
> : a splatter painting might suddenly seem more comprehensible once
> : you know that it's titled "Anxiety".
>
> Tangent: I've invested quite a bit of energy, the last six or seven years,
> in Barnett Newman's "The Voice of Fire". The last time I went to see it, a
> tour guide was telling his group to stare at the line where the red and
> blue meet. After a while, the line starts shimmering and tongues of orange
> start shooting into the blue--hey presto, voice of fire! That's what it
> *does*, see--well, it's not *of* anything, so it must *do* something--and
> once you *get it*, you move on to the next one.
>
> So, you know, "Red and Blue Composition #4" would have been a lot better
> ... except sometimes it's better to give the wrong idea.
Umm... I don't know, I'm not convinced from your description that
Newman might not have, uh, Sincerely regarded this effect as
reminiscent of "the voice of fire".
But then, I've never heard of the guy, you're clearly more
familiar with his work than I am, and if it rings a little hollow
to you there are probably reasons.
> Actually, on that same trip, another tour guide had her bunch of kids lie
> on the floor with their feet up against the little barrier, as if that was
> what it was for, so you could look up at the painting, properly. She kind
> of had me wondering if that really *was* what it was for, until I went
> around the other side of it and the security guard asked me to please get
> behind it.
>
> (Which reminds me of another trip to an art gallery, in which *I* was part
> of a group, except not a sanctioned group, and we were huddling around one
> of the paintings, and the guard told us we weren't allowed to stop--this
> was the Cezanne/Gauguin/[other French guys?] roadshow that stopped by
> Toronto a couple of years ago. Our leader argued with the guy for a while,
> until the guy said "Look, I have nothing against art, or education, or..."
> and at that point everyone knew he'd given the game away. Poor guy.)
After dragging the Toadkeeper to some museum exhibit or other, he
commented "I'd forgotten what pernicious enviroments museums are
for exhibiting art."
(The Toadkeeper, by the way, had an amazing knack for not tacking
advantage of his advantages... he worked in Manhatten near
Chelsea, and didn't understand that the neighborhood was full of
gallery spaces until I took him to some of them. And it took me
years to talk him into visiting the Nicholas Roerich museum in
the upper west side -- according to S.T. Joshi -- who is
admittedly not as intellectually deep as say, Greg Pallast --
claimed that Roerich paintings were an influence on Lovecraft's
"At the Mountains of Madness". What more do you need to know?
And it turns out that he was some sort of whacked proto-newage
mystic, with a style in tempera paints that was not so far off
from the Toadkeeper's oil crayon work. Even *he* had to admit
that the Roerich museum had been worth the trip.)
> : Well, I think your complaints -- which I'm snipping -- sound a
> : bit on the picky side
>
> I'm a grad student. Complaining is my job.
What about making obscure allusions?
> And if you think I'm going to skip the opportunity, you haven't been
> paying attention.
Who, me?
> : and I *suspect* that they're a little besides the point. Essentially
> : you're saying you wanted slicker (or maybe "neater"?) theatrics... but
> : is that *really* what you want?
> I want a costume party where everyone goes home without taking
> their masks off.
Aren't they all like that?
> : > Look: if you're going to be pretentious, you'd better not let up.
> :
> : I think I had a similar reaction to seeing her perform. It's
> : hard to fault her on concept, ability or execution (in my
> : opinion, anyway), but I walked away thinking something like "Was
> : that sincere?" That strikes me as a totally insane question to
> : ask, and yet I went away asking it
>
> Maybe you meant to be asking something else. What's sincerity in art,
> anyway? (Well, she could sincerely care about doing justice to the memory
> of the Armenians et al., but whether she does or doesn't is a question
> about propaganda, not art.) What I want is *commitment*. ("Passion" is in
> the area, but dispassionate commitment would do, too.)
>
> If I were to invent myself as a piece of usenet art, I would be much more
> committed, but much less sincere.
>
> Hypocrites are sincere.
Is it *consistency* that you're after? I don't see how it
matters so much. The artist can engage in self-contradiction,
even within a piece of art, and it doesn't automatically make it
bad art.
Anyway, for me "Sincerity" is just one way of asking the
question, another is "is she just a poseur?" So I suppose you
could re-phrase it as "is she committed to this position, or has
she adopted it just because she has to adopt something to keep
working?"
In any case, like I said I suspect that these are insane
questions... it's reaching for something, that probably can't
really exist.
The rock star is not supposed to be a human being, but an avatar
of the gods, the living embodiment of some sort of Dionysian
excess. The rock star is permitted to do things that we are not,
but is not allowed to exist as an ordinary human being.
(There was a friend of mine who was a big Jonathan Richman fan,
who felt betrayed somehow when she found out that he had some
kids. Was that child-like innocence just a piece of schtick?)
> : > Which reminds me of that old Armenian abstract expressionist Rabo
> : > Karabekian, memorializer of the genocide, who, when asked what made his
> : > monochrome house-painted canvasses art, whipped up a realist drawing of
> : > plainly evident technical virtuosity, and said, "the fact that I can do
> : > this."
> :
> : Yes, a common dodge, and few of us are free of this prejudice:
> : you need to show that you're capable of doing conventional work
> : before you're allowed to do unconventional.
> I think it's more basic than that--you need to show that you
> can do something I (or my three-year-old, or my dog) can't do,
> or else what's so special about you?
John Cage was once explaining one of his methods of composing
with chance elements, and an interviewer commented "But I could
do that too." Cage responded "Have I said anything to give you
the impression that I thought you were stupid?"
What was Karabekian really saying? We should give him credit for
trying to say something with his monochromes because he's capable
of doing conventional illustration? What if he's just a very lazy
conventional illustrator? Isn't he still open to the accusation
of being a con-artist rather than a real one?
You're right that a lot of people feel more comfortable spending
money and time on someone with some technical capability on
display, but even when that's there, e.g. in the range of
Diamanda Galas' voice, it isn't really enough by itself.
Virtuoso vocalists aren't really all *that* rare. Why bother
with one rather than another?
I submit that what really counts is some display of depth of
intellect or emotion... when that's there virtuosity, while
not irrelevant, isn't quite necessary.
> (And, you know, the same thing applies to philosophers (and
> poets), which is part of the bind (public) intellectuals are in
> these days, caught between the banal and the arcane.)
I was just flipping through Russell Jacoby's "The Last
Intellectuals" again recently, which I gather you've noticed:
http://obsidianrook.com/doomfiles/LAST_INTELLECTUALS.html